Filipowicz, Kornel, The Memoir of an Anti-Hero – 1961

Written in 1961, The Memoir of an Anti-Hero by Polish writer Kornel Filipowicz is a novel set during the Second World War. It begins with the very first days of the German occupation and ends with Poland’s liberation. The events unfold from the perspective of an anonymous narrator, the anti-hero, about whom the reader knows very little other than that he is a middle-aged man, that he speaks fluent German and Polish, and that in the war he is solely concerned with staying alive. Early in the novel, he indicates that his life represents the greatest good and that no one has the right to deprive him of it. This aspect is what the literary work gravitates around, as it follows the thoughts and actions the narrator engages in to attain this high aspiration.

One of the primary ways in which he bypasses direct participation in armed conflict and potential death is by strategically shifting between his identities as Polish and German. The narrator’s nationality or nationalities are never explicitly revealed, but allusions are made to his Polish identification papers, and, because in his workplace he operates fully in German, he adopts these identities interchangeably in different contexts. For example, when he is imprisoned with a group of Poles after a German police raid his boss vouches for him, attesting to his German identity. Similarly, towards the end of the novel he is once again imprisoned, this time by the Poles, who suspect him of having been an accomplice to the Germans during the occupation because of his work. Here, too, his identity is confirmed, only this time by witnesses who testify at his trial and maintain that the narrator had assisted his fellow Poles in times of hardship perpetrated by the German occupants. After these proceedings he is released and the novel ends with his return to his home and with the realization that he had managed to survive, having attained his highest goal.

However, these acts were not driven by his solidarity with the oppressed. On the contrary, the narrator indicates his feelings of apathy and disgust towards those confronted with the hardships of the war. He helps Poles in difficult situations only because in those circumstances assisting them does not endanger him. On the contrary, such action will favourably reinforce his identity as German or Polish and allow him to preserve his life. In terms of heroism or resistance, the narrator finds heroes foolish for marching to their deaths and reflects on the fact that historically, dissidents who do survive are easily forgotten. Thus, the novel positions him as the anti-hero both in the sense of refusing involvement in resistance, as well as in the fact that he seeks to survive and benefit from the suffering of others.

The narrator’s attitude towards other people is what makes Filipowicz’s work interesting in terms of perpetrator studies. It raises questions of positionality and of agency, considering what motivates individuals in difficult contexts to act or not to act. Because the narrator is an active agent that strategically inhabits the gray area between victims and perpetrators of violence, the novel constitutes a complicated starting point for considerations of implication, complicity, and positionality in contexts of violence. 

Author of this entry: Sabria Schouten.

Filipowicz, Kornel. The Memoir of an Anti-Hero. 1961. Penguin Classics, 2019.